Nikon D200 – Review by Bjørn Rørslett

Bjørn Rørslett has recently posted impressive review on the new Nikon D200, a 10.2 MP DSLR with 2.5″ LCD screen, and wrote:

“My conclusion is that you will get image quality from D200 to satisfy even the most critical needs, for any application to which 35 mm systems can be used. While the D2X might just yield a trifle higher image quality, we are truly nit-picking in order to place one of these cameras before the other.”

“I have identified three different kinds of striping, such as they appear visually. Now, I do not know whether they all originate from the same source. In fact, I haven’t any inside information to the underlying cause(s). All I do know is that we see a real, existing issue with some cameras. Is it serious? Maybe not on a general level, but a troubled camera could be annoying for some shots, more so because the presence of striping seems to be very unpredictable. Now you see it, now you don’t. However, when striping do occur, it typically is one of the following,

* Type I. A comb-like pattern of short, alternating very light and very dark lines surrounding smaller and often intense highlight areas, some “combing” seen also at the boundary between high-light and darker backgrounds. Often needs 200% magnification to show up clearly. Different post-processing can reduce the visibility of combing to a large extent.

* Type II. Alternating light and dark lines occurring in shadows, where they may extend across the entire area, but highlights are clean and show no trace of this. Contrast difference between lines less than in (I). Seen with studio portraits, against-the-sun shots, and suchlike setups, in which there are significant areas of highlights. May be seen already at 100%.

* Type III. Striping across the entire image frame in a very regular pattern, often clearly visible below 100% magnification and starts to show up at 33%. Less contrast betwen stripes than in either (I) or (II). Can occur with night exposures, severely underexposed images, or more unpredictably for quite normal scenes although these tend to have some contrast in them.”